1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing method and apparatus for processing an input job in parallel at a plurality of color image output apparatus, and to a storage medium storing a program realizing such a method.
2. Related Background Art
A user selects a desired printer by using a printer driver and an application running on a computer, and instructs a print job via a public line such as a LAN and a dedicated interface. A server/client system is well known in which a client user sends a job via a document server to a printer.
In the market called print-on-demand or the like, a document made up of a large number of pages such as a manual or an operation instruction document, or documents of a large number of volumes from publishing companies, are often requested to be printed. In order to deal with such cases, the concept of cluster printing has been proposed, in which one document in a server or client is printed by a plurality of printers at the same time. In addition, color documents are also quite prevalent, and cluster printing for color documents would be desirable.
Cluster printing for color documents poses a problem of a difference between hues of output samples printed by printers, this problem not being associated with cluster printing for white and black documents. An environmental change or secular change of each printer can be mitigated to some degree by calibrating the printer. However, since printers have characteristics specific to them, minute differences therebetween appear in output samples. Such differences in hues between output samples printed out at the same time becomes a critical issue to a user. Although a difference between hues of printers of the same type is less conspicuous, a difference between hues of printers of different type is a more serious problem.
Color adjustment for a printer is generally included in a series of processes called RIP processes of converting PDL data into bit map data. Only the color matching process cannot be used independently. In order to print out data from a plurality of color MFP's, it is necessary to perform the RIP process a plurality of times, which requires double the normal RIP time.